Industrial controllers and their associated I/O devices are central to the operation of modern automation systems. These controllers interact with field devices on the plant floor to control automated processes relating to such objectives as product manufacture, material handling, batch processing, supervisory control, and other such applications. Industrial controllers store and execute user-defined control programs to effect decision-making in connection with the controlled process. Such programs can include, but are not limited to, ladder logic, sequential function charts, function block diagrams, structured text, or other such programming structures.
Unlike general purpose computing devices, industrial automation devices often generate vast amounts of real-time data. This is due in part to the large number of system variables that must be monitored and controlled in real-time for a given automation system. In addition to production statistics, data relating to machine health, alarm statuses, operator feedback (e.g., manually entered reason codes associated with a downtime condition), electrical or mechanical load over time, and the like must be monitored, and in some cases recorded, on a continuous basis. This data is generated by the many industrial devices that can make up a given automation system, including the industrial controller and its associated I/O, telemetry devices for real-time metering, motion control devices (e.g., drives for controlling the motors that make up a motion system), visualization applications, lot traceability systems (e.g., barcode tracking), etc. Moreover, since many industrial facilities operate on a 24-hour basis, their associated automation systems can generate a vast amount of potentially useful data at high rates. For an enterprise with multiple plant facilities for which data is to be collated, the amount of generated automation data increases even more.
The large quantity of data continuously generated by today's industrial automation systems may render cloud-based storage and analysis of this data cost-prohibitive due to bandwidth, storage, and processing constraints.
The above-described deficiencies of today's industrial control and business systems are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with conventional systems and corresponding benefits of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein may become further apparent upon review of the following description.